Pin grid arrays (PGAs), land grid arrays (LGAs) and ball grid arrays (BGAs)are well-known electronic packages in the electronics industry. The current trend is towards the use of BGA and LGA packages. LGA packages require a compressive socketing approach. The packages generally have gold on the surface of their pads which permits a lower compressive contact force to be used in order to establish reliable electrical connection between the package and the printed circuit board. When printed circuit boards are manufactured, they typically contain solder plated through-holes or surface pads for mounting of components thereon. Compressively mounting of an electronic package to such a solder plated pad or through-hole would require a relatively high compressive force in order to establish good electrical connection between the package and the printed circuit board. The contact force necessary to establish reliable electrical connection between a package and solder plated pads of a circuit board would be approximately 150 grams whereas the force required to establish reliable electrical connection between two gold surfaces is approximately 50 grams. Since the pads of an electronic package are typically gold plated, it would be desirable to have a gold surface of mating pads on the circuit board. This presents a problem, however, in that a complex set of procedures would be required in manufacturing such a circuit board in order to plate isolated areas of the circuit board with gold.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,073,118 by Grabbe et al. teaches electrical terminals comprising a head having a flat contact pad engaging face and a shank in the form of a compliant pin which extends through a plated hole of the printed circuit board in order to allow an electronic package such as a land grid array to be compressively mounted over the flat contact pad engaging face. The contact pad engaging face is gold plated therefore reducing the compressive force necessary in order to establish a reliable electrical connection. This approach, however, does not provide a method of connecting an electronic package to a printed circuit board which does not have plated through-holes but instead is designed for surface mount type connections. A problem, therefore, exists in that there is a need to establish a gold-to-gold electrical connection between the pads of an electronic package and a printed circuit board designed for surface mounting connections only.